


wearing out, asymptotically, to the absolute zero

by cryptologicalMystic



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Apocalypse, Dark fic, Depressing, Entropy, Gen, I'm Sorry, Puella Magi Population Dynamics, Puella Magi Shizuki Hitomi, Unhappy Ending, i wrote this in like four hours hence why it's not all that great
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26962885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryptologicalMystic/pseuds/cryptologicalMystic
Summary: Q: If Hitomi Shizuki were to become a magical girl, what would she wish for?A: For Kyuubey to disappear immediately.- Gen Urobuchi, Nitro+ Q&A panel, 2013In one timeline, Hitomi was brought along for the ill-fated attempt to restore Miki Sayaka from her witch.This was a spectacularly bad idea, but not entirely for the reasons you'd assume.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	wearing out, asymptotically, to the absolute zero

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [1](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/699490) by Jack Ike. 



> if youre here from the lore server w/o any context im sorry. im so sorry. for the love of fuck PLEASE turn back now

Haste is the Incubator's downfall. The phenomenon of self-sacrifice has been known for some time: if one candidate contractee gives their life for another, then the magical potential of the former is temporarily transferred to the latter.

"Temporarily" is the operative word here. The added potential generally fades away completely within a matter of minutes, if not seconds - a time scarcely long enough to vocalize a wish. The effort required to contract such a candidate before that time is up is almost always greater than the energy gained thereby. 

But Kaname Madoka has - no, had - the highest potential of any candidate, _ever_. Not just by a few percentage points, but by several orders of magnitude. 

In this scenario, the net benefit of salvaging what remains of her destiny is worth almost any cost. 

"I wish - " 

Haste is the Incubator's downfall. Before Shizuki Hitomi is more than two or three syllables into her wish, its tassels are already reaching out towards her heart, desperate to actualize as much of the sacrifice-transferred magical potential as it can before it decays. 

Like always, though, Kyubey has failed to account for the spanner in the works that is human emotion. 

Hitomi has just witnessed one of her best friends die in order to save her from the _thing_ that hatched from her other best friend's corpse. And she knows exactly who to blame for this tragedy. 

"I wish you would disappear! All of you! Right now! And never, ever come back!" 

It's too late for the Incubator to stop, to cancel the process that is pulling Hitomi's soul from her body and crystallizing her wish into a miniature star. It cannot undo the monumental mistake that has just been made. 

In that moment, it learns the meaning of fear. Not just for itself and its kind, but for the work they will leave incomplete, and for the universe that their disappearance will condemn. 

Kyubey's last words are these: 

«You've ruined everything.» 

The wish is granted. The Incubator disappears immediately. 

Hitomi is left, breathing heavily from the pain, cradling a green-glowing Fabergé egg in the palms of her hands. 

Behind her, Sakura Kyoko is slack-jawed in shock. And then, gradually, in horror. She's survived as part of the magical 'food chain' for long enough that she has a basic understanding of the population dynamics involved. She's lived as a Puella Magi for long enough that she can instantly grasp what will happen without the Incubators to replace losses in their ranks. 

_Five human lives consumed, and a familiar matures into a full-blown witch, with familiars of its own -_

"Shizuki," Kyoko whispers, her voice trembling. "You - you - " 

_You've caused the apocalypse,_ is what she can't bring herself to say. 

Several meters away, Homura Akemi turns her shield, and the arrow of time curves back upon itself. Her little bubble of desperate negentropy detaches from causality, and leaves this timeline to its doom. 

~ 

I could tell you about how Kyoko discovered Homura's disappearance, and how she reluctantly enlisted Hitomi to fight against the dreadnought witch threatening the town that Miki Sayaka held so dear. 

I could tell you about how the witches began to become more and more frequent. 

I could tell you about how the crime rate and the death rate began to tick upward, slowly at first, then faster and faster. 

I could tell you about the chaos that ensued when the reality of miracles and magic were revealed to the world at large. 

I could tell you about humanity's bright and defiant hope, recruiting precognitives and clairvoyants and polymaths of all sorts from the ranks of those Puellae Magi who still held firm even in the face of madness and chaos skies. I could even tell you about how maybe, just maybe, they left behind the curse-choked Earth and ascended through impossible hardship to the stars. 

But that's not the end. 

This is the end: 

It's the future. 10^10^120 years from now, to be precise. That's a number far outstripping the 10^82 atoms in the present-day observable universe. That's a number that the human brain, with its neuron count of less than 10^11, cannot ever truly comprehend. 

With numbers like that, you don't even need to specify 'years'. The difference between 10^10^120 milliseconds and 10^10^120 millennia is a rounding error. 

The stars have died out. The black holes have evaporated. All that remains of existence are scattered neutrinos and photons redshifted beyond invisibility. 

Entropy has increased to maximum. 

But the population of the universe is not zero. 

It is 1. 

Ironically, perhaps even poetically, the last remnant of life is the last remnant of the girl who unwittingly sealed life's fate. 

Boltzmann, the witch of turning inward, whose nature is self-defeating. 

**Author's Note:**

> ill put in various writing notes when its not bedtime lmao
> 
> edit: ok here we go
> 
>   * it is canon to this fic that hitomi had a certain amount of internalized lesbophobia/biphobia and also was repressing a massive crush on sayaka.
>   * kyubey's final words were originally just a straight up young wizards reference, but it didn't make sense so i changed it
>   * the title is a quote from isaac asimov's "the last question"; i wanted to make it a(nother) young wizards reference, but i couldn't find one that fit
>   * the name 'boltzmann' is a reference to the concept of a [Boltzmann brain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain)
>   * boltzmann's type, 'turning inward', is a rough literal translation of the Ancient Greek root word for 'entropy' - ἐντροπῐ́ᾱ, ἐν 'in' + τροπῐ́ᾱ 'turning' ( ~~apparently the word as a whole means/meant 'turning _toward_ ' but i didn't learn that until after i'd already gotten attached to my description so let's just ignore that asdfghjkl~~)
>   * boltzmann's 'self-defeating' nature was... a lot of things, really. primarily it was inspired by [this](https://thepageofhopes.tumblr.com/post/70240050696/): 
>
>> A witch’s nature is the character’s/your nature that ends up destroying you and driving you into despair when twisted.
> 
> the hitomi of this fic (and to a lesser degree in the anime itself) has an unfortunate tendency to shoot herself in the foot by doing what she believes to be the right thing. she makes an ultimatum towards sayaka, giving her time to confess to their shared crush before hitomi herself makes a move, and inadvertently ends up contributing to sayaka's despair. she strikes against the suffering inherent in the witch system by removing its ultimate cause, but accidentally destabilizes the system in the process, causing it to spiral into [madness and chaos skies](http://hypocriticalparadox.blogspot.com/2013/01/magia-curse-of-puella-magi-english.html).  
>  it also ties back into boltzmann's type of 'turning inward', aka entropy. the incubators created the witch system with the intent to counteract the eventual heat death of the universe; witches are creatures whose very existence lies in opposition to entropy. boltzmann is therefore a living paradox: a being made of [exergy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exergy), whose form and essence embody entropy.
>   * i referenced [this page](https://wiki.puella-magi.net/Population_dynamics) some for information on the math of the witch system, and [these](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future#cite_ref-bignumber2_140-3) [pages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_universe) a lot for numbers related to the death of the universe
> 

> 
> miscellaneous headcanons/stuff that i couldn't fit in:
> 
>   * an explicit statement that, since a reversal of time is [effectively a reversal of entropy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_\(arrow_of_time\)), the incubators of the final timeline should have been a _lot_ more excited when they figured out homura was a time traveler
>   * some sort of reference (in the very beginning, during the discussion of the sacrifice effect) to the possibility of a candidate whose magical potential is high enough being able to bootstrap themself into granting their own wish, which is my headcanon for why, exactly, episode 12!madoka was able to make a wish Like That without the incubators putting a stop to it
> 



End file.
